doi:10.1017/S0003055410000080 Ministerial Selection and Intraparty Organization in the Contemporary British Parliament

This article promotes a characterization of intraparty politics that explains how rank- and-fileparty members control the delegation of power to their cabinet ministers and shadow cabinetministers.Using the uncovered set as a solution concept and ameasure of partymembers ’ collective preferences, we explore the hypothesis that backbenchers ’ preferences constrain the ministerial selection process in a manner that mitigates agency problems. Specifically, promotion is distributed preferentially to members whose own policy preferences are proximate to the uncovered set of all party members’ preferences. Our analysis of ministerial appointments in the contemporary British Parliament supports this view. For both the Labour and Conservative parties, front bench appointments are more sensitive to the collective preferences of backbenchers in each party as measured by the party uncovered set than to the preferences of the parties ’ leaders. Modern parliamentary government is at oncecabinet government and party government. Itis cabinet government in that the legislative agenda is set by majority party leaders negotiating in private rather than by members voting on the cham-ber floor. It is party government in that backbenchers generally operate as members of disciplined and pro-grammatic organizations, not as free agents. These two aspects of parliamentary government are intimatel